please help, we have to withdraw our offer

em_9187

we have talked about this all week and we have regrettably decided to withdraw our house offer. we feel terrible but since losing my job, we feel we must because the future looks uncertain.

i am the main bread winner and we are absolutely terrified of the fees we have incurred so far. it has been about seven weeks since our offer was accepted.

we have paid £250 deposit to our solicitor.
550 on valuation and home buyers report.

we have also stupidly paid the estate agents £300 to advertise the home we are now living in, as it is rented we would have been leaving our contract early - now we are essentially homeless.

please someone tell me how bad things are going to be for us. we do love the house we wanted to buy but we just can't.

em_9187

also, do we need to pay our mortgage broker if we didn't complete on the house sale?

Alchemilla

If you havent exchanged you can stop the process right now. Tell the agent you are staying and get a bill from your solicitor.

You might consider letting the vendor have the survey report to soften the blow slightly.

anselld

You should only pay for work done. So if survey and valuation are done then kiss goodbye, if not get them cancelled. Likewise tell solicitor to stop work immediately and return unspent funds.

Have you actually signed any surrender documents with the EA? If not then you are not homeless, just tell them you have changed your mind. If they have already been marketing you have probably lost the £300 but you should not lose you're tenancy.

em_9187

no we have signed nothing with the estate agents to say we want to leave early - i did email them and we are on very good terms with the estate agent.

we have got ourselves into a right mess. i haven't slept all week.

Slinky

Logic says the easiest option for your landlord of rental property is to let you remain. If you haven't had people round viewing already who may have got involved in taking it, you're probably going to be OK on that front.

dancingfairy

Normally if you give notice and the landlord has accepted it then you overstay then you could be liable for double rent. I'm not sure what the correct term is (held over/bound over?).
It appears you have tried to negotiate an early surrender to your rental contract and as part of that you have agreed to pay the letting agents to market the property. I'm unsure where you stand on this, whether the contract would still continue or whether a court would find that both parties had agreed a mutual surrender.
I suggest you get all your information together and have a chat with Shelter to see where you stand.
Do you think the letting agents/landlord would be happy to allow you to continue the tenancy?
df

Scrounger

Em, Whilst you still speak of "losing your job", we have already established here that you did, in fact, hand your notice in. :eek:

How's the job hunting going?

Scrounger

silvercar

dancingfairy wrote: »

Normally if you give notice and the landlord has accepted it then you overstay then you could be liable for double rent. I'm not sure what the correct term is (held over/bound over?).
It appears you have tried to negotiate an early surrender to your rental contract and as part of that you have agreed to pay the letting agents to market the property. I'm unsure where you stand on this, whether the contract would still continue or whether a court would find that both parties had agreed a mutual surrender.
I suggest you get all your information together and have a chat with Shelter to see where you stand.
Do you think the letting agents/landlord would be happy to allow you to continue the tenancy?
df

Irrespective of any notice given or agreements made, if tenants don't physically leave, the landlord has to go to court to force an eviction if he really wants the property back.

em_9187

Thank you - we do feel terrible for the situation for the sellers as we know how desperately they wanted to get out. We have clearly been genuine as we have had the survey done etc.

Has anyone else experienced this?

em_9187

I found another position but it is not in the same field of work.

I did hand my notice in, yes, but I had no choice in the matter. I really don't want to go into the details. I did what I had to do. Our mortgage broker informed us that because it is in a different line of work I would need to complete my six month probationary period.

I know it is easy for people to think I resigned with little thought and I was naive but I didn't so please can we not comment on this part. I don't suppose it makes a difference anyway, does it? I have beaten myself up enough about this but I couldn't continue in that line of work a second longer.